If you have visited Zuccotti Park recently, you may have seen a man in his thirties leading a meditation session of about 30 protesters.
A midst the chaos that is inherently part of Occupy Wall Street movement, that's Rasanath Das or Chelakara Ramanth (his given name), a former investment banker and an Ivy League graduate who now wakes up at 4:30 a.m. for daily prayer and occasionally goes to Zuccotti Park to lead meditation sessions.
According to a profile in the Wall Street Journal by Jo Piazza, Das, who spends most of his time looking for enlightenment, once used to earn a $170,000 salary negotiating deals at Bank of America.
It's Grammy Sunday in America, and here is a music-related post, including some items connected to the biggest music awards in the land and some not.
Two long-time friends of SAJA, Chandrika Tandon and Vijay Iyer, were nominated for Grammys today. They didn't win, but they certainly showed yet another dimension of the South Asian community in the U.S. You can listen to the SAJA webcast here.
Chandrika Tandon (@soulchantmusic), nominated for Best Contemporary World Music Album for "Soul Call"; and Vijay Iyer (@vijayiyer), nominated for the Best Jazz Instrumental Album for "Historicity".
Jay Sean, who hit #1 on the Billboard charts with "Down" two years ago - and whose webcast with SAJA/SAMMA you can listen to at this link - is back. Here's a press release:
Jay Sean and Lil Wayne Recreate Magic
On February 8, 2011, Jay Sean released his latest single “Hit the Lights” featuring Lil Wayne on iTunes. The club banging track rocketed to the top 20 on the first day and within 72 hours, “Hit the Lights” shot up the charts and held the #4 spot. Jay Sean and Lil Wayne have surely recreated the magic of their first single together, in fact, this time around the dynamic duo has outdone the initial success of “Down” by taking their track to the top five immediately following the release.
For interviews with Jay Sean please contact Komposit Entertainment: isha at kompositlive.com (tell her SAJA sent you).
From a note by SAMMA co-founder Raj Shah:
HP, in its new global campaign “Everybody On” with Alicia Keys includes a video from Billboard pop/urban recording artist Jay Sean, on the heels of Jay’s Tuesday release of a new track “Hit the Lights” (#3 on iTunes as of Friday).
It's the first time that HP, the largest computer-maker in the world has included a South Asian artist in its U.S. content/campaigns.
This is a preview on YouTube before it hits the HP Global site:
Nita Chawla, a NY-based singer-songwriter, has just written a song, "Revolution," dedicated to the people of Egypt & Tunisia. It's not yet on NitaChawla.com, but she's shared it with SAJAforum. Thanks, Nita!
Long-time SAJA member Brian Q. Silver, Ethnomusicologist and World Music Curator of the Voice of America wrote in to let us know that he has launched a new VOAWorldMusic page on Facebook. He's looking forward to your feedback: BSilver at voanews.com.
Liveblogging, sorta, the Grammys:
11:20 pm: This ad runs:
10:50 pm: Nicki Minaj, the Trinidadian hip-hop star (who is of South Asian origin) is presenting a category with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
10:10 pm:Norah Jones, who won nine Grammys between 2000 and 2009, is presenting a category (she presented with Ringo Starr last year).
[Desi Spotting = items with a South Asian connection - see our archive]
Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011: Live-blogging the Super Bowl on this post, looking for South Asian stuff during the telecast - starting 6:30 pm EST. You can see all the commercials at http://foxsports.com/ads
What did we miss? Email us: saja at columbia.edu or @sajaHQ on Twitter.
We'll be looking for sideline shots of Brandon Chillar, who is a member of the Green Bay Packers. A terrific linebacker for the team, he was injured in November, so is not in uniform tonight.You can listen to the SAJA webcast from 2009 with Chillar; his agent, Jim Ivler, his agent; and Kevin Negandhi, ESPN anchor.
SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, and SAMMA, South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment Association, present a conversation about the biggest day in American sports from a South Asian perspective. Join us as SAJA co-founder Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) and sports marketing prof Vijay Setlur (@vijaysetlur) chats with ESPN's Kevin Negandhi (@knegandhiespn), who's co-hosting SportsCenter that night; Anish Shroff (@anishESPN), ESPN anchor-reporter, who covers college footballl; Adnan Virk (@adnanvirkESPN), ESPN anchor; Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala), NY Giants reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who is covering the Super Bowl; and Arash Markazi (@arashmarkazi) columnist for ESPNLosAngeles.com. We had hoped to have Chillar call in for a few minutes, but he wasn't able to join us (see above for our 2009 webcast with #54).
12:08 pm: SAJAer and ESPNEWS anchor Adnan Virk (@adnanvirkESPN) (or the right) co-hosts "Highlight Express," filled with Super Bowl coverage. Negandhi was a guest on SAJA's Super Bowl webcast - see link above - and discussed his career path, advice for those interested in sportscasting and more. Click on image for bigger version.
10:02 pm: A desi gets a Super Bowl ring - Brandon Chillar (who is on injured reserve) will be among those who get a Super Bowl Ring as the Packers beat the Steelers. That makes him the second South Asian to win a ring (Bobby Singh was the first, with the St. Louis Rams).
From an 2009 post on SAJAforum, here are the only two other South Asian players to play for the NFL:
Bobby Singh, St. Louis Rams (the only player, perhaps, to be on the teams to win an NFL Super Bowl, a Canadian Football League Grey Cup and an XFL championship)
Sanjay Rajiv Beach, who played four years from 1989-1993 (for the NY Jets, Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers); he is in the record books for catching soon-to-be superstar Brett Favre's first proper completion, in 1992 (Favre's very first completion was a pass deflected to, and caught by, Favre himself).
9:58 pm: SAJAforum exclusive! This is a photo of SAJAer and ESPN anchor Kevin Negandhi (@knegandhiESPN), taken minutes before he hosts SportsCenter, which goes live on ESPN as soon as the Super Bowl ends on Fox.. The SportsCenter right after the Super Bowl as got to be one of the highest-rated episodes of the most popular sports shows in the world. Negandhi was a guest on SAJA's Super Bowl webcast - see link above - and discussed his career path, advice for those interested in sportscasting and more. Click on image for bigger version.
UPDATE - 10:08 pm: A photo of Negandhi in action:
8:20 pm: SAJAer Aman Batheja (@amanbatheja), a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is tweeting from the action. Here are some of his tweets:
amanbatheja8:12pm via twidroyd jerry jones was right. this is the greenest #superbowl ever #sbst #sbxlv http://twitpic.com/3x9j2l
And you can see one of his blog posts here, which is about fans outside the stadium (which is where you see him below).
7:40 pm: From tweets to @sajaHQ by Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo), religion reporter for the Detroit Free Press:
The guy who helped former Steelers all-star center Mike Webster when he was sick was an Indian-American, Sunny Jani http://es.pn/hch7fM
"For the last six years of Mike Webster's life, from 1997 to 2002, Jani was his most consistent, most constant companion."
7:05 pm: There are three Groupon ads coming up during the Super Bowl telecast (featuring Cuba Gooding, Jr., Timothy Hutton, and Liz Hurley). The site with came to worldwide attention when it turned down Google's offer of a $6-billion acquistion, is now preparing for an IPO said to be valued at $15 billion. The desi connection? Groupon's VP of product development is Suneel Gupta (@guptathink), who we featured on SAJAforum two years ago when he launched KahaniMovement with his brother Dr. Sanjay Gupta (@SanjayGuptaCNN) of CNN. Suneel's wife is SAJAer Leena Rao (@leenarao), who is a writer at TechCrunch, the popular tech news site.
6:45 pm: While you're watching the most famous hair in American sports - that would be Troy Polamalu's lustrous tresses - take a moment to see a NY Post article called "The Hair Pair." It's about how SAJA Board member Raakhee Mirchandani (@raakstar) has the same hair as Polamalu.
MIT quantum astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala was announced Sept. 28 as one of 23 winners of the coveted 2010 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a genius grant, and will receive a $500,000 “no strings attached” award over the next five years.
“I had always known of the MacArthur fellowship and all the wonderful scientists, historians and artists who had won it in the past, but I never, ever in my wildest dreams thought that I would be one of them,” Mavalvala, the first-known Parsi to receive the award, told India-West.
“I am incredibly humbled and so grateful to my colleagues and everyone who has supported my work,” she said from her office at MIT on the afternoon the winners were announced.
Back in 1996, we put together a list of past South Asian winners (or, in the case of Jhabvala, South Asian connections). Anyone missing? The award was first given out in 1981.
A lot has happened since then, especially in the last few months: The much publicized sale of Newsweek by the Washington Post Company to electronics magnate Sidney Harman (for a $1 pricetag and the assumption of $47 million of liabilities). Rumors of a hookup with The Daily Beast. The launch of a Pakistan edition of Newsweek. Several big names have left the magazine, including SAJAer Fareed Zakaria, who is now an editor-at-large at Time, connecting his CNN show, "Fareed Zakaria GPS" with the network's Time Inc cousin.
In America’s relationship with Pakistan, carrots predominate, in part because we have so few sticks. After our almost unquestioned support for Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf didn’t elicit sufficient cooperation against the Taliban, we showered the civilian government that replaced him with $7.5 billion in aid, to little effect. American generals praise the very real sacrifices—in blood and treasure—made by the Pakistani Army in the fight against militants in Swat and South Waziristan; yet calls to broaden the campaign to North Waziristan, home to one of the deadliest Afghan insurgent groups, the Haqqani network, go unheeded. U.S. and Pakistani diplomats recite platitudes about “our common enemy, and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari repeatedly invokes his assassinated wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, to underscore his dedication to battling extremists. But that depends on whose extremists.
We asked the always upbeat Hajari three quick questions about Newsweek, the future of US-Pak ties and the new Pakistan edition. His answers, via e-mail:
Earlier tonight, after a day of work and teaching, I sat down with my dinner to watch the 10 p.m. ESPN "SportsCenter" (which was on ESPNews because of college football). It was a major sports day: playoff baseball featuring Yankees v. Twins and Giants vs. Braves; Randy Moss has his first day of work with the Vikings; among other stories.
But to me, the biggest story was the anchors. It was the first time, as far as I can tell, that two South Asians anchored the biggest sports news show in the land. What more proof do you need that America is changing than to see two non-caucasian, non-African-American anchors hosting a quintessential American TV show? Growing up in the U.S., I never saw South Asians on TV and could never have imagined the changes that have come to pass; I've documented some of those changes in a post on the eve of the "Slumdog Millionaire" Oscars victory.
Here's a photo of Kevin Negandhi, left, and Adnan Virk doing their anchor thing:
I wasn't the only one to notice. While I was taking the photo above, I got the following note from Amar Shah, a fellow SAJA member and senior segment producer at Mighty Oak Entertainment (and former ESPNer and "Page 2" contributor):
Just wanted to spotlight on ESPN tonight there was a South Asian tandem of Kevin Negandhi and Adnan Virk in the anchor chairs.
First time I've ever seen that. An Indian-American and a Pakistani-Canadian. Pretty bad ass.
More on Negandhi here and more on Virk here. The other South Asian anchor on ESPN is Anish Shroff(who had been a top three contestant on the 2004 ESPN reality show, "Dream Job"). Post your comments below.
Earlier on SAJAforum - SAJA sports webcasts (these are also examples of the changes around us):
>>> SHORTCUT TO THIS PAGE: http://bit.ly/kakaria <<<
Funeral arrangements: Viewing on Tuesday, Sept. 28, 3-5 pm and 7-9 pm at Moloney Lake Funeral Home, 132 Ronkonkoma Ave, Lake Ronkonkoma, NY, 11779;tel: 631-588-1515. The cremation, for family only, will be held on Wednesday at 11 am. Please note: A separate SAJA memorial service will be planned for the weeks ahead.
Please post your comments and memories of Amrit in the comments section below or e-mail saja@columbia.edu - we already have comments from S. Mitra Kalita, former SAJA president; Shashi Tharoor, Indian parliamentarian and author and many more. Add yours!
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: You are welcome to re-use any of the materials from the site.
Amrit Kakaria, a leading Indian-American journalist in the U.S., died on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010, in Long Island, New York. The cause was a heart attack (he had been battling cancer, but it was under remission). He was 72. He is survived by his wife Bettina Kakaria and other family members, including, his brother Bal Kakaria.
Kakaria retired in 2002 after 45 years in the media business, most recently as head of U.S. operations for the India Today group (he had earlier launched India Today's North American edition and also worked in New Delhi and London).
An early member of the South Asian Journalists Association, Kakaria played a critical role in the group's growth as an adviser to the group's founding members. In 1996, wrote a personal check for $2,000 to launch its most influential program, the SAJA Journalism Awards.
"Amrit was SAJA's guiding spirit and a mentor to dozens of us in the media," said Sree Sreenivasan, SAJA co-founder and a professor at Columbia Journalism School. "His passing is a tremendous loss to all South Asian journalists in the U.S.," he said.
In 2005, he was inducted into the SAJA Hall of Fame, which recognizes pioneering South Asian journalists for their contributions to U.S. media as well as veteran U.S. journalists who helped shape coverage of South Asia (other inductees include Gobind Behari Lal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for science writing in 1937 and the first journalist to write about cancer research; his nephew, Brij Lal, a veteran broadcast journalist who joined ABC News in 1952; Gopal Raju of founder of India Abroad; Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian and former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors; Rajan Devdas, a photojournalist for more than 60 years in India and the U.S.; A.M. "Abe" Rosenthal, the former New York Times editor who covered South Asia as a young correspodent and continued to write about it as a columnist and James W. Michaels, former editor of Forbes, who first covered India during its struggle for independence and revisited the region in reports over five decades).
ABOVE: Amrit Kakaria, as he was inducted into the SAJA Hall of Fame in June 2005 by SAJA co-founder Sree Sreenivasan.PHOTO: Preston Merchant.
"Amrit was involved with SAJA from its very early days and cared deeply about SAJA," said John Laxmi, SAJA treasurer and board member. "He took the liberty to call me and email me every now and then to give me tips, advise and admonitions to keep SAJA on its track and committed to its mission. Anyone who has dealt with Amrit will miss his kind and gentle friendship," he said.
At a time when all the stories you see in the U.S. press about Muslims are connected to the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero and items dealing with Pakistan are all about the floods or the violence in that country, I was pleased to see a different sort of item about a Pakistani immigrant named Choudry Ali, owner of Magic Fountain, a Long Island ice cream
shop.
From Jennifer Glickel'spiece in DNAinfo.com (a Manhattan news site I write for):
Magic Fountain, a shop selling homemade ice cream in Mattituck, is a favorite spot for New York City refugees and locals alike. “It’s absolutely wonderful ice cream,” said Nancy Daly, who lives in Midtown. “It’s homemade and you can really tell.” Ali, 43, offers 100 unique flavors of ice cream that he makes from scratch with fresh ingredients each day in the back room of his store. When he bought the shop three-and-a-half years ago, patrons could choose from a much smaller selection of flavors: vanilla, chocolate, or mint chocolate chip. “Vanilla, chocolate and mint chip became boring, frankly,” Ali said. “So I decided to get creative.”
That creativity resulted in many flavors (see a long list below and at his official site), including Guiness, Chocolate Chili, andy, yes, keeping with his South Asian roots, Kulfi, a traditional ice cream made in Pakistan and northern India.
Ali draws inspiration for his ice cream from every aspect of his life, from walking down the aisles in the grocery store to his childhood growing up on a farm in Pakistan, from where he immigrated to the States in 1985.
Legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vinod Khosla is featured in the Vanity Fair's annual listing of The New Establishment 100. He comes in at #71 (Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is at #1 and Apple's Steve Jobs at #2) on the list of "the 100 most influential people of the information age".
Even with credit tight, Khosla was able to raise $1.3 billion last year to seed two different investment vehicles—a $1 billion fund earmarked for clean-energy and information technologies, and a $300 million fund that will target high-risk, experimental projects. Among his current investments: a suburban-Detroit-based manufacturer of fuel-efficient internal-combustion engines (EcoMotors), an LED lighting company (Soraa), a solar-energy concern (Cogenra), and a high-efficiency-cooling-system company (New PAX). In May, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, joined Khosla’s venture-capital shop to serve as an adviser.
Can you name other South Asians who should, one day (or even now) be on such a list? Tell us in the comments below or tweet us @sajaHQ.
This cover is from the August issue of T, the New York Times Style Magazine, and features actress Freida Pinto of "Slumdog Millionaire" fame. We have added it to our collection of 150 U.S. magazine covers 1921-today.
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